


The ice we skate is getting pretty thin; the water's getting warm so you might as well swim

by asparagus_writes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Baby Luke Skywalker, Childbirth, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, RotS AU, Secret Marriage, Sexual Humor, and it gets revealed, baby Leia Skywalker - Freeform, basically the star wars equivalent of giving birth in a taxi on the way to the hospital, but they're played for humor, chickens with their heads cut off all of them, clueless men don't know how babies are born, half-serious threats of bodily harm, just like in every sitcom ever, the miracle of birth, unrealistically well adjusted Anakin Skywalker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27521506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagus_writes/pseuds/asparagus_writes
Summary: “Are the GAR medics really trained to deliver babies?”“Probably not, but I think they might be our best bet right now.”“I cannot believe this is happening while I’m stuck here on your ship.  A ship full of exclusively men.”Taking a very pregnant senator on an important war-ending mission is not a good idea. Padme, Rex, Anakin, and Admiral Yularen learn this the hard way.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 65
Kudos: 380





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This scene drifted across my mind tonight and I dropped basically all of my responsibilities like hot potatoes to write it. You sure are getting a lot of content from me this week, but this was very easy to write since I've been spending so much time in Rex's headspace to begin with. Enjoy!
> 
> (title is from Smash Mouth's All Star, if you didn't recognize it lol)

Rex stood slightly behind General Skywalker’s right shoulder as they stepped up to the doors to the bridge. He looked apprehensive from this angle, but Rex would have thought that the man would be a little bit more pleased that Senator Amidala was accompanying them on this mission, especially since their success would basically mean the end of the war. They were on their way to the planet Mustafar, to arrest the members of the Separatist military council hiding there, which was why the Senator was coming along—for diplomatic purposes, on order of the Senate.

When the doors slid open, the first thing Rex saw was the Senator, leaning against the holoprojector table, the swirl of hyperspace filling the transparisteel windows behind her. Her eyes were closed, and Rex was surprised to see it, since he didn’t think that Senator Amidala was really the type to get nervous or need to center herself in anticipation of a thing like this.

General Skywalker was evidently concerned by it too, because he made a beeline for her as soon as he had taken in the scene. He braced one hand on her lower back and used his other to cover her hand where it clutched the table. Of course, Rex already knew of their relationship, but he usually expected them to be a bit less obvious about it than this. Admiral Yularen, at least, had noticed their closeness, and Rex saw his curious gaze lingering meaningfully on their points of contact. Rex had learned that Yularen was, in the fondest use of the description, quite the nosy bastard.

“Is everything alright?” Skywalker asked her under his breath as Rex came to stand next to them. Senator Amidala opened one eye to look at Skywalker.

“I hate to say it, given what we’re on our way to do, but I think it might be _time_. For—you know.”

General Skywalker drew in a harsh breath and Rex thought he looked a bit paler under the bridge’s bright lights.

“Right now?” He hesitated.

“Should we—Do you need to, you know, go sit down?” Skywalker asked, looking at a loss for anything else to do or say. Rex wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but they seemed to both understand the situation well enough.

“What I _need_ is to knee you in the crotch, _hard_ , so that I never have to experience this again.” The Senator bit out.

General Skywalker blinked, caught off guard at the statement. Admiral Yularen’s greying moustache twitched on his face.

“Uh,” Skywalker said hesitantly, “maybe you could at least wait ‘till we’re in private?”

“ _Maybe_ I could— _ah_ —” she ground out before grimacing, doubling over and bracing one hand against her side.

Skywalker stepped closer to her to hold her up, which Rex thought really was an example of how deserving he was of the media’s nickname for him, in light of the threats that had just been made. Rex was wearing armor and he wouldn’t even have been brave enough to do it.

“Get a medic,” Skywalker ordered, tense as Rex had ever heard him. It had Rex raising his commlink to his mouth very fast in order to obey.

The Senator turned and pressed her head into General Skywalker’s chest and he frowned down at her. Her knuckles were white where they still clutched the holotable. Skywalker rubbed his hand across her back and they remained that way for a few moments. Then, it looked like she relaxed marginally and Rex heard her muffled voice ask tightly,

“Are the GAR medics _really_ trained to deliver babies?”

Admiral Yularen must have heard _that_ jarring statement just as well as Rex had, judging by the way his eyebrows flew up into his hairline.

“Probably not, but I think they might be our best bet right now,” Skywalker said, a little shakily.

“I _cannot_ _believe_ this is happening while I’m stuck here on your ship. A ship full of exclusively _men_ ,” Amidala griped.

Skywalker shook his head, “You’re right, I should never have let you come.”

Amidala raised her head from his chest to glare at him.

“That is _not_ what I meant and you know it. You’re on thin ice right now, or have you already forgotten what I just promised to do to you?”

“Sorry,” Skywalker said, impressively still not backing away from her, but apparently willing to cut his losses by not arguing. He glanced worriedly at the view of hyperspace that lingered outside of the ship.

“How long have you been…?” he asked her.

“Well, I’d been feeling them all day, but they weren’t—”

Skywalker reared his head back.

“—And you didn’t say anything because?”

“They were false contractions, which are perfectly normal—”

“—and do you still think they’re false?!”

“Obviously not, _Anakin,_ but—"

In addition to the Admiral and Rex, pretty much all of the clones and military personnel on the bridge were not-so-subtly watching the pair now, though Rex wasn’t sure how many could actually hear what was being said.

“General, Senator,” Admiral Yularen interrupted sternly, Force bless him, “would you care to explain what exactly is going on here?”

Both Amidala and Skywalker’s heads snapped to look at him. Silence reigned for the space of a few heartbeats.

“Well, there’s no easy way to put this, but—” Amidala started.

“—Padmé is pregnant, and she’s just gone into labor,” Skywalker said.

 _Oh._ Rex thought. _That meant_ —

Yularen nodded tightly, evidently having already guessed at the answer to his original question, but murmurs rippled through the rest of the assembled command staff, who were mostly clones and therefore probably had not had the same frame of reference to speculate from.

“This certainly is a…difficult situation. Senator,” Yularen continued delicately, “I can set up a comm call to Coruscant or Naboo to inform the, er, father of your child of the circumstances, if you would like?”

“Not necessary. He’s aware,” General Skywalker answered for her.

Rex fought valiantly not to laugh, but only because, after witnessing what Amidala’s bad side was like at the moment, he didn’t want to end up on it. He also didn’t think Skywalker’s bad side would be very mild right now, so—double the reason for him to keep it together. More murmurs rippled through the bridge, though they were silenced by Amidala’s pained gasp and the sight of her abruptly renewing her death grip on Skywalker’s arm.

“I am going to _kill_ you, Ani,” she gritted out lowly before the pained expression on her face abruptly changed to one of surprise. General Skywalker clearly noticed.

“Padmé?”

“Um—” she looked down at her feet and he followed her gaze.

“I’m pretty sure my water just broke,” she said in a high, small voice. Rex saw a trickle of clear liquid spreading on the floor coming from under her skirt and realized with a sinking feeling that he was woefully underinformed about how human childbirth worked. Rex’s armored boots had slogged through some pretty nasty terrain over the course of the war, but he stepped back slightly to avoid the puddle anyways.

“Right. Okay—” General Skywalker said breathlessly.

Senator Amidala suddenly cuffed him with an open palm to the back of his head. His eyes widened and he ducked too late to avoid it, but it looked like it hadn’t hurt him very much.

“Anakin Skywalker, you are _not_ allowed to freak out right now— _I’m_ freaking out!”

Rex found a new appreciation for Padmé Amidala, seeing as she clearly knew (maybe even better than Rex) how to handle Anakin Skywalker, because he sobered pretty quickly at that, nodding seriously. His whole posture changed without him letting go of Senator Amidala, and Rex was very familiar with the look of focus that came over his face.

“Sure, uh,” he brought his wrist up to eye level, “we should be timing them, right?” He quickly pressed a button on the chrono built into his wrist-comm, which set a stopwatch going.

“How do you know to do that?” Amidala said suspiciously after staring at his wrist for a beat. He looked at her like it should have been obvious—which it very much wasn’t—but Rex was just glad that _someone_ seemed to have the situation under a bit more control now.

“The other day, you left the datapad you were reading out on the kitchen counter and I picked it up,” he said, “it was very detailed.” He then looked quickly at the bridge doors, like he had just remembered something.

“Actually, I may have downloaded the article to my datapad, which should be in my quarters right now—”

“Okay, depending on how this goes, I might just let you live,” Amidala said, looking distinctly impressed over top of her worry.

Rex gestured imperiously at some shiny standing on the other side of the room, who was, even with his bucket on, looking very much like a frightened tooka caught in a pair of headlights. Thankfully, the trooper understood what Rex meant and hurried from the room to go retrieve the information.

“Hey, can I get someone from Nav over here?” General Skywalker asked to the room at large, “I want to know where exactly we are in hyperspace right now and how fast we can get to a system with a reasonably well-equipped medcenter.”

Rex knew quite a bit about just how difficult it was to get a Venator of this size and with this powerful a hyperdrive out of lightspeed and redirect it on a dime. And, since Mustafar was in the Outer Rim, there was a slim chance that there would even be a medcenter close enough to them to redirect to.

The Senator groaned again and grabbed at General Skywalker, who went back to rubbing the space between her shoulder blades. She clutched her free hand against her stomach, pressing her voluminous, ceremonial senatorial dress against her body, and yep, Rex could now see that she looked, indeed, very pregnant. Maybe it was because he’d only ever seen pregnant human women in holodramas and never up close, but Rex thought that whoever was in charge of dressing her deserved an award for hiding it so well up until right now.

The trooper from Nav hovered behind them for several moments, looking very unsure, before Amidala straightened slightly again. Skywalker glanced at his chrono.

“Well, that was pretty fast after the other one,” he remarked.

“This is all your fault,” she muttered before sucking in a deep breath. Her husband—Rex figured he was allowed to think of General Skywalker like that from now on, given the situation—tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. He then leaned close to her ear and said something to her that Rex couldn’t catch. Rex observed a small smirk grace the Senator’s lips.

“I did, didn’t I?” she murmured in a completely different tone than the one she had just been using.

The man from Nav cleared his throat before Rex could think too hard about _that_.

Skywalker pulled away from his wife to address the man, but she whimpered and he turned back to her quickly.

“Stay, please,” she whispered. Skywalker blinked.

“I thought you wanted to eviscerate me,” he said. Amidala looked at him, hurt.

“After you hold my hand,” she clarified.

“Allow me to handle this,” Yularen cut in, stepping up to shepherd the still-waiting Nav trooper off in the direction of the star map projected on a screen in another part of the command deck.

“Good man,” Skywalker said.

Several moments after that, while Rex still was standing there like a useless idiot, the doors to the bridge opened again, and the flurry of activity that had been set off by General Skywalker’s abrupt gaining of composure halted.

An unsuspecting Kix walked in.

 _Took him long enough._ Rex thought.

“Hey, Kix,” Skywalker said, far too casually, “how much do you know about childbirth?”

“Not much sir, why?”

“Well, then, we’d better hope I’m right about that article on my datapad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m CACKLING right now!!! This might be my favorite thing I’ve ever written.
> 
> (And it’s a happy AU to boot because Palpy is definitely already dead as a doornail in this one, y’all.)
> 
> XD


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously...  
>  _“Hey, Kix,” Skywalker said, far too casually, “how much do you know about childbirth?”_  
>  _“Not much sir, why?”_  
>  _“Well, then, we’d better hope I’m right about that article on my datapad.”_

“Oh,” Kix said, unhelpfully, after the General had explained. Or, rather, he had _started_ explaining and then Senator Amidala had doubled over in pain. At that point, Kix had figured out the rest pretty quickly.

“I’d like to revise my answer to ‘not nearly enough’” Kix told them, yanking off his bucket to stare at the Senator, impressively managing to look only slightly panicked.

“Yeah, well that makes at least two of us,” Skywalker responded.

“Three,” Rex muttered to himself, seeing the way Senator Amidala’s normally regal and composed expression was contorted in pain. Why did something that was supposedly ‘natural’ have to hurt that much? Was something wrong? Between her death grip on the holotable and General Skywalker holding onto her, she still looked like she was about to collapse onto the floor.

“Rex, can you find her something to sit on?” Skywalker, asked, tossing a look over his shoulder at Rex. Supply requisitions was something Rex did not need to have any knowledge of childbirth to get right, and he felt immensely relieved to have something to do.

“Yessir,” he said quickly and then remembered that all the chairs on the bridge were fastened to the floor so they wouldn’t go flying around when the ship was attacked. His optimism deflated. Rex figured that Senator Amidala would not be happy if they made her go sit at a comms station in the corner while the rest of them made decisions around the central holotable. Nothing was ever easy, was it?

After futilely glancing around the bridge, hoping to find something he could drag over for the Senator to sit on, Rex remembered there was a supply closet not too far down the hall that might have something useful. He started towards the doors, praying that no one would see him leaving and think that he was trying to run away from the situation. It wasn’t too far from what he wished he could do.

He almost ran into the shiny he had sent to retrieve Skywalker’s datapad on his way out. The man had clearly run the whole way through the ship. If there was one way one could say the clones were suited to the situation, it was their sense of urgency, Rex supposed.

“Give that straight to the General,” Rex managed to tell him as they passed. The kid was having a hell of an initiation into the GAR, even by the standards of the 501st. As he hurried to the storage room, Rex wondered how the shiny might paint his armor to reflect whatever the hell this mission had turned into, as was generally the clones’ custom. Maybe a little baby on his pauldron? How would one distill the way everything had gone so completely and unexpectedly off the rails in nothing but a simple—

Then Rex stopped dead in his tracks in the hallway, realizing he was going to have to write a _report_ about all of this.

The only helpful thing Rex found in storage was a crate of ammunition, which he awkwardly pushed out the door and towards the bridge. When he returned, Kix was pouring over the datapad, standing next to Skywalker and the Senator, who seemed to be suffering through another bout of pain. The medic was concentrating intensely and looking faintly horrified at the same time, and Skywalker was intermittently craning his neck to read over Kix’s shoulder and trying to comfort his wife.

Rex pushed the crate behind the Senator, and General Skywalker gave him a grateful look as he helped her sink slowly down onto it. She looked down, read the label on the crate’s lid and then said,

“This isn’t _live_ ammunition, is it?”

Rex’s brain went blank with panic for a moment. He hadn’t thought of that.

The sensation of many nearby pairs of eyes being trained on him powered up his thoughts, and he quickly reasoned that they wouldn’t keep live ammunition anywhere close to the bridge, right?

“No ma’am,” Rex assured her, almost tripping over his tongue. It wouldn’t be a problem. As long as nothing nearby caught on fire, and no one shot a blaster at the crate, everything would be fine.

Probably.

“I found the part about timing the contractions,” Kix said, thankfully diverting attention away from Rex’s not-a-fuckup-thank-you-very-much.

“They’re about three minutes apart,” General Skywalker said, “what does that mean?”

Kix’s eyes darted across the lines of text.

“Uhh…How long do they last?” he asked.

Skywalker glanced on the chrono on his wrist and then at his wife for confirmation.

“Just under a minute at a time.”

“That puts her at…the tail end of the ‘active labor’ stage,” Kix read from the datapad, “around seven or eight centimeters…dilated?”

Dilated? The only part of a person’s body Rex had heard of dilating was the pupils of their eyes, which he very much doubted had anything to do with…this. He heard the question in Kix’s voice too.

“My cervix,” the Senator clarified.

“What?” Rex said quietly from behind her, very tempted to add “ _the kriff_ ” onto the end. General Skywalker, who had been standing close to the Senator with one foot on the ground and the other knee balanced on top of the crate, twisted to look back at Rex.

“You don’t want to know,” he said seriously, then to Kix, who it seemed like had no choice _but_ to know, “there’s an anatomy diagram—scroll back up.”

Rex caught a glimpse of the diagram and then wished he hadn’t. Skywalker was right; he didn’t want to know.

Seeing his tiny little brothers growing in their clear tubes on Kamino had already given him the creeps, and this looked much worse and more complicated. He wondered why all humans didn’t do it the way the Kaminoans had—if he’d had a mother, he would have been feeling very sorry for her right now.

“I was so not trained for this,” Kix muttered, staring at the datapad.

“That’s what I said,” Senator Amidala muttered. Her husband looked between her and Kix thoughtfully.

“Here’s a question for you, Kix: how are our med droids programmed?”

“…For trauma mostly, Sir,” Kix responded, the answer sounding like it was more of a question.

“ _Mostly?_ ” Rex said hopefully.

“The Republic contracts out its military medical equipment, just like it does with most things,” Senator Amidala added thoughtfully, “if the company that makes them does some sort of base programming for all their droids, then it’s possible the one on this ship might know how to deliver a baby.”

“You’re very clever,” Skywalker told his wife appreciatively. “Has anyone ever told you you’d make a decent politician?”

She started to laugh, but it quickly turned into a moan as she clutched her stomach again.

“And you’re decent—” she gasped, “—at getting yourself— _ooh_ —out of the doghouse—”

“You’ve given me lots of practice.”

“Although—” she groaned, “just _decent?_ You might need some more.”

“Kix, have them check the droids in the medbay and see,” Rex interjected, even though Kix probably would have done that next anyways. He wanted to feel helpful, okay?

Kix handed the datapad back to General Skywalker, who accepted it distractedly, and walked past Rex to make the comm to the junior medics somewhere out of the way. Rex couldn’t resist jibing as he passed,

“A good droid is a dead one, huh?”

“I’ll get the tattoo _removed_ if it means I don’t have to be on the hook for dealing with… _this,_ ” Kix shot back under his breath.

“Too late for that, brother,” Rex said.

Just as Kix returned to their group around the central holotable, taking back the datapad but looking distinctly reluctant about it, Yularen and the clone trooper from navigation also approached. The two quickly got a chart of the sector of the galaxy they were in projected from the table. Amidala narrowed her eyes at it, seeming like the pain had gone for the moment.

“We’re quickly coming up on a major intersection in hyperspace lanes at Eriadu,” Yularen explained to the group, gesturing at the map. They were currently travelling on the Hydian way. “Its central location makes it likely the planet would have adequate medical facilities.”

It seemed a neat solution. Rex looked at General Skywalker, who had that look on his face he sometimes got when he knew he disapproved of a plan but was still trying to figure out the reason _why_ he did. Rex had heard him explain once to General Kenobi that sometimes his brain needed to catch up to what the Force was telling him. Jedi were weird.

His wife, however, beat him to the punch this time.

“We would be pulling 94 Gs coming out of lightspeed?” she interrupted, looking distinctly unimpressed reading the display of calculations for the course adjustment. “I’m not a physicist but I’m fairly sure that would kill us all pretty instantly.”

The navigation clone paled. He shifted his weight guiltily and did not deny it. Yularen frowned at him reprovingly, but Rex was sure the oversight had been just as much his fault as any of the troopers’. Not that Rex had any room to judge, considering he recently hadn’t spared a thought to whether the crate he was asking a pregnant woman to sit on was liable to explode.

That none of them had been trained to deal with a pregnant Senator in labor on their ship was becoming very evident. They weren’t usually this sloppy.

“I’m going to have to veto that, then,” she said sternly, taking the silence as confirmation.

“So, we can’t safely divert to a different hyperspace lane,” Skywalker summarized. “Which makes the next systems on our current route…” he enlarged that region of the star chart and read them off, “Shumavar, Atravis, Tosste, and then Mustafar.”

The first three Rex had barely ever heard of—which meant that, being in the Outer Rim, they were unlikely to have better medical care available than they already had on the ship. And seeking help on Mustafar was also out of the question, for obvious reasons.

Amidala screwed her face into a grimace, and Rex assumed she was just as unhappy with their options as he himself was, until she started taking controlled breaths and reached out to squeeze her husband’s hand, and he realized she must be having another contraction.

“How long would it take for us to come out of hyperspace _safely_?” General Skywalker asked, kneeling down on the floor next to his wife. The Nav trooper started making the calculations, looking extremely nervous as he did so. Skywalker waved Kix over.

“Is there anything we can do right now about pain management?” he asked lowly, splitting his attention between the Senator and Kix.

“According to this,” Kix said, gesturing to the datapad, “it’s pretty typical to do a spinal block, which the med droid could manage in the medbay.”

The General gave Kix his full attention then, looking distinctly relieved.

“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” he said. “Hopefully we can wrap this up in a few minutes and then meet you down there.”

“Twenty-seven minutes, General,” the Nav trooper called out, in answer to Skywalker’s previous question. Rex checked the output on the hologram and was relieved to see that the G-force was indeed much lower than it had been.

“So, we overshoot, then turn around and head _back_ to Eriadu,” Skywalker ordered. Everyone on the bridge seemed to issue a collective sigh of relief at having some sort of a plan to deal with the situation. Everyone except Senator Amidala, who objected through the pain,

“Wait, we can’t do that! We’re not just going to abandon our mission.”

“Oh,” General Skywalker said. “Right. The Separatists.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The crew of a star destroyer when confronted with a pregnant woman in labor: no thoughts head empty
> 
> I had originally intended to just write a follow up to the first part, but then it got long. So, there's going to be a final installment. It's mostly written, and I'm planning to post it Friday to bring in the New Year with some more fun!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously...  
>  _“So, we overshoot, then turn around and head back to Eriadu,” Skywalker ordered. Everyone on the bridge seemed to issue a collective sigh of relief at having some sort of a plan to deal with the situation. Everyone except Senator Amidala, who objected through the pain,_  
>  _“Wait, we can’t do that! We’re not just going to abandon our mission.”_  
>  _“Oh,” General Skywalker said. “Right. The Separatists.”_

“Anakin, _tell me_ you did not forget about the Separatists—” Senator Amidala started.

“I did not!” Skywalker spluttered.

“You did.”

“Okay, so maybe they’re not my _first priority_ right now—”

“But _I_ was sent here to do a service to the Republic, and I need to do my job,” she said, her face an obstinate mask now that the contraction had passed.

General Skywalker spluttered again, then looked up at the ceiling of the bridge as if there might be instructions on it for this very specific situation.

“Padmé—” he finally said, “there’s such a thing as _maternity leave_ , you can’t—”

“We can end the war, and you want to turn back?”

Rex had spent enough years in command of troops to know that sometimes retreat was the best option. He didn’t need to know much about childbirth—and he _really_ hoped he wouldn’t have to learn any more—to see that this was one of those times.

“What would you have us do instead?” Skywalker asked her. It was clearly a rhetorical question, but Rex doubted from the look on her face that she was going to treat it that way.

“There’s nothing wrong with any of the rest of you! Go to Mustafar and arrest the Separatists,” she said, dead serious.

“You want me to go play nice with Nute Gunray and leave you to deliver our baby by yourself, without proper medical care? I’d like to use my veto now.”

“You don’t get a veto, Anakin. This a diplomatic mission, which means I’m in charge.”

General Skywalker’s expression had morphed into something dangerous.

“Yes, it _is_ a diplomatic mission, which is why it makes no sense to continue it. You told me yourself that you’re supposed to be going with us to make sure that things are being done by the book. When we get to Mustafar, you’ll either be about to have a baby or will have just had a baby. It seems to me we threw _the book_ out the airlock ten parsecs ago!"

“Well, _someone_ needs to do _something!_ This is the most vulnerable position we’ve ever had the Separatists in, and you know it. They’ve lost the people pulling their strings and Obi Wan just got rid of the last of their military leadership, we can’t just—”

She stopped, gasping through another contraction and grabbing onto General Skywalker’s hand with white-knuckled intensity. Rex winced. It was his mechanical hand, and Rex thought he probably should have given the shiny who retrieved the datapad another request: to bring the repair kit Skywalker used for making adjustments to his hand. She had to be crushing some kind of circuitry in there. Pregnant women were scary—and Rex prided himself on not thinking many things in the galaxy were scary.

“ _Anakin_ —” she sobbed, suddenly sounding the opposite of intimidating, “ _help_ —"

General Skywalker froze next to her, like something terrible had happened, or was about to. Rex quickly looked around at all the bridge displays, expecting to see one of them start flashing red in dire warning—that was what usually happened when his Jedi acted like that. It was a sharp contrast to the composure he’d been displaying since his wife had knocked some sense into him.

“ _We need help_ —” Amidala whimpered. Once those words sunk in, General Skywalker seemed to relax ever so slightly, and no klaxons were going off. He took one second to make some kind of decision—Rex could tell from his face—and then he was bracing his free hand on the nape of his wife’s neck, bringing his face close to hers. He told her so softly that Rex, the closest person to them, was barely able to hear,

“I’m not leaving your side, alright? That’s non-negotiable. But you’re right, too. We need help, and I’m going to get it for us, just hold on.”

Rex saw her nod tightly. Then, General Skywalker was turning back towards the holotable—and the assembled command staff, who had been watching him and the Senator expectantly—as much as he could while she still gripped his hand.

“Show me the map with all the current deployments of Jedi Generals. We’ll need to send someone else to Mustafar in our place.”

Whoever was at the controls of the projector complied, and soon they were looking at a star chart, with certain systems glowing yellow to indicate the presence Republic forces.

“Utapau,” Skywalker said to himself, naming the one that was closest to Mustafar, “that’s—” the set of his mouth turned resigned, “that’s Obi Wan. Of course.”

“Static, I need you to contact General Kenobi for me. Tell him it’s urgent,” he ordered the clone comms officer. Then he turned back to his wife, who seemed to be in less pain for the moment and was watching him with a concerned, almost frantic, look on her face.

“Would sending ‘The Negotiator’ to Mustafar be an acceptable replacement for sending you?” he asked lightly.

“Yes,” she responded quickly, “but what are you going to tell him?”

“The truth,” Skywalker said. She opened her mouth to protest but he promised her, “it’s alright,” before extricating his hand from hers so he could stand at attention in front of the holotable.

“Set course for Eriadu,” he ordered the Admiral.

Quickly, General Kenobi’s image popped up, larger than life in hologram form. He already was pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers before anyone had said a word.

“What is it this time, Anakin? I didn’t think you would have even made it to Mustafar yet.”

“We haven’t. Are you almost done wrapping up over there, Master?”

Rex imagined that Kenobi was hiding an eyeroll behind his hand—he probably assumed that General Skywalker was calling just to annoy him, which he _had_ been known to do on occasion. This mission was supposed to be simple—just an escort—and Kenobi clearly had expected it to be.

“Yes, we should be departing for Coruscant in less than an hour. You haven’t answered my question, you know.”

“I’d really appreciate it if you _didn’t_ go back to Coruscant and came to Mustafar instead. We need backup,” Skywalker admitted, doing an admirable job of burying the lead, even though Rex _knew_ that trying to withhold the details from General Kenobi wouldn’t end well.

Kenobi dropped his hand from his face and stared at his former padawan in utter confusion.

“Backup? You just said you’re not even there yet! Only _you_ could manage to—” he narrowed his eyes, “—where’s the Senator?”

“Well, that’s the problem, Obi Wan. She’s currently indisposed, and you’re the next closest diplomat.”

“ _Senator Amidala_? I—Truthfully, Anakin, I had expected this to be your fault,” Kenobi admitted, stunned.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Master,” Skywalker answered with way more sarcasm than was definitely wise in this situation, “but it _is_ actually my fault. At least, Padmé has been insisting that it is.”

“What is?” General Kenobi asked, leaning forward in anticipation.

“She’s having a baby, and it turns out I’m probably the most qualified person on this ship to _deliver_ a baby, which is an incredibly low bar, really, so—”

“She’s—Anakin, hold on a second—she’s _what_?”

Rex heard someone who he was pretty sure was Commander Cody swearing violently in the background.

“Pregnant. But not for much longer.”

Rex suddenly regretted the fact that holograms were monochrome, because he would have been very interested to witness the shade of red General Kenobi’s face was probably turning in that moment. He hoped somebody in the 212th would have the presence of mind to take a picture.

“Obi Wan—” General Skywalker began carefully when Kenobi was dangerously silent for a few moments.

“Padmé is pregnant, I assume with your—”

“ _Yes_ , but I’d argue that’s kind of beside the point,” Skywalker cut him off.

“Beside the point!? Anakin, this is—”

“A medical emergency that we’re not equipped to deal with here?”

“No! Well, _perhaps_ , but it’s terribly irr—”

“—irresponsible of us to send a senator into a den of Separatists when she needs to be going to a medcenter? I agree.”

Senator Amidala made a small noise of pain and Skywalker turned to look at her, the expression he usually wore when getting dressed down by the Council cracking into something much more worried. She gripped the edges of the ammunition crate tightly, absent her husband’s hand, and Rex wondered if he was obligated in this situation to offer her his hand to squeeze. His knuckles ached at the mere thought of it.

Rex wasn’t sure if the sound had been transmitted to General Kenobi—her image wasn’t in the pickup range at least—but regardless, he deflated a bit and calmed his voice to say,

“Anakin, you have to have realized this won’t end well for you.”

General Skywalker tilted his chin up defiantly, which, in Rex’s experience, never failed to be a harbinger of chaos. Although, this time the chaos had already arrived.

“As long as it ends with my wife and child healthy, I’d say it’ll end pretty well for me. So, can you help both us and the Republic, or do I need to call and ask someone else?”

He and General Kenobi stared each other down.

For all that Rex thought General Skywalker was holding himself together remarkably well, he broke first.

“You can look at me disapprovingly for as long as you want later, but this is a time-sensitive issue, _and_ a military one—”

Kenobi looked taken aback, but, because he was professional to his core, quickly conceded,

“Yes, yes, we’ll deal with the Separatist council if we must.”

“Good. We’ll send you over all the intel we have—though I think you’ve seen most of it already—and the planning we managed to do so far—”

“Anakin,” General Kenobi stopped him, looking at his former apprentice in the peculiar, fond, way that Rex saw him do all the time, but that Skywalker never seemed to notice.

“What?”

“This _does_ mean that we’re even now,” Kenobi offered, the corner of his moustache twitching.

“Sorry?”

“For you saving my skin for the ninth time,” Kenobi clarified, now smirking, “though I still intend to block off a few hours of your schedule for a lecture later.”

Skywalker’s mouth hung slightly open, but the teasing in his response seemed to be automatic.

“You’ll have to squeeze it in between me getting yelled at by Master Windu all day and getting up in the middle of the night with the baby.”

Kenobi arched an eyebrow.

“I’ll manage.”

“Boys, I’m very glad you’re getting along, but I’d really prefer to _not_ have this baby in the middle of this bridge,” Senator Amidala interrupted them, this time loud enough that General Kenobi would hear it.

“Right,” General Skywalker said, already turning away, “gotta go.”

“Good luck, Anakin,” Kenobi said.

Skywalker stopped and stared at his former master again.

“May the Force be with you,” he paused, “ _Uncle_ Obi Wan.”

General Kenobi’s eyes widened in realization, which was the last thing Rex saw before Static cut off the transmission. He hoped again that someone in the 212th was recording this for posterity.

Skywalker and Kenobi sometimes, _honestly_.

“Kix, go ahead, we’ll be right behind you,” Skywalker was saying while the rest of them were still processing the holo-conversation. Kix hurried out of the bridge, stopping awkwardly right before the doors because he had almost forgotten to do a hasty salute. Skywalker waved him off.

“I think I can trust all of you to coordinate with the 212th, then?” the General asked as he returned to Amidala’s side.

A smattering of ‘Yes, Sir’s echoed through the bridge, overlapped by the Senator’s shriek of surprise as Skywalker lifted her into a bridal carry.

“You’re going to carry me all the way there?” she protested, already wrapping her arms around his neck, “I’m too heavy!”

“You’re tiny,” he said dismissively, starting towards the doors. He didn’t seem as if he was having much of a problem with her, but he could have been using the Force and no one would have been the wiser.

“ _Look at me_ , I’m as big as a purrgil!”

“What, you think I couldn’t deadlift a purrgil?”

“ _Yes,_ ” she replied, as the doors opened for them, her voice edged with pain.

“Rex, Yularen, you’re in charge!” General Skywalker called out instead of answering her as they left.

The doors closed behind them with an anticlimactic _snik,_ leaving the bridge crew in stunned silence.

“What do we do now?” someone asked. Nobody in the room seemed to have an answer. Rex looked at Yularen, hoping that the man would know better than him. The Admiral was clearly lost in thought, staring at a point in the middle distance intently. Then, he laughed to himself, the ends of his well-manicured moustache curling upwards. Rex had hoped that not being in the same room as Skywalker and Amidala would make him less nervous, but whatever Yularen seemed to be planning wasn’t exactly helping.

“We’ll have to wait a bit until it’s safe to revert to realspace, and the medics will have to take care of the rest in the meantime. But—” Yularen announced to everyone on the bridge, “I can think of _something_ we can do.”

Rex suddenly got the feeling that this wasn’t going to end well.

“It’s just that neither of them mentioned whether they were having a daughter or a son. Who’s feeling lucky?”

Rex was _not_ feeling lucky, but after a few moments of astonished (and then thoughtful) silence, a weapons officer reached for a pouch on his belt, and called out,

“I’ll put ten credits on a boy, sir!”

It didn’t take long for all hell to break loose. In the chaos, as soldiers swarmed Admiral Yularen to place their bets, which he gleefully started keeping track of in a spreadsheet that he projected from the main communications console, Rex made a retreat to a quieter corner of the bridge. He came to stand next to two clone technicians, who also seemed content to observe the bedlam from afar. One muttered to his friend,

“Biologically, aren’t there about even odds for that?” He scoffed, “it’s a crapshoot.”

“Yeah, but when has General Skywalker ever cared about ‘the odds?’” his buddy replied. The first seemed to consider that for a moment.

“You’re not wrong. For the record, I think that Commander Tano was just the beginning. It’s gonna be a girl. But I’m not the betting type.”

“And I’m pretty broke at the moment,” the other lamented.

“If there were some kind of third option none of us was thinking of, that’s what I’d put my money on,” Rex offered, though he couldn’t think of one. This was one of those days where something else crazy might as well happen. And the second tech had been right: this was _Anakin Skywalker’s_ offspring they were talking about.

The speculation eventually moved on to other topics: what Commander Tano’s nickname for the baby would be (though they all agreed nothing would ever top _Skyguy_ ) and what they would name the kid being the most popular. Apparently, some clones were preparing to make their case to General Skywalker about why the baby should be named after them.

Meanwhile, Rex got the sense that at least Senator Amidala would be staunchly opposed to naming her kid _Clanky_ , but you never knew.

When the Admiral was asked what he’d do if they named the baby after him, he simply replied,

“I’d feel awfully sorry for the child, being saddled a name like Wullf.”

Rex had to agree there.

They only briefly stopped gossiping when it came time to drop out of hyperspace and turn around. When that had gone smoothly, they went back to their speculation. None of it was very professional, but really, General Skywalker had started it.

Not an hour after Skywalker had gone with Amidala to the medbay, the incoming message light on the communications table blinked. Admiral Yularen frantically waved his hand at everyone to quiet down.

“It’s the General,” he announced. Everyone tried to school their expressions and postures back into something resembling professionalism. Yularen accepted the communication and General Skywalker’s grinning holographic face appeared. Seeing the smile, Rex felt a nameless knot in his stomach unclench. They had made a big deal about the necessity of getting proper medical care for the Senator, but no one had actually given voice to what might result if she couldn’t get it in time. But, Skywalker wouldn’t be looking like that if anything bad had happened.

“How are things up there, Admiral?” Skywalker asked.

“Everything’s going smoothly,” Yularen fibbed, as if the bridge of his military vessel hadn’t been functioning as a casino just a moment ago, “how are—”

“It’s over. Everyone’s fine. Healthy, as far as any of us, in our admittedly limited experience, can tell, though I’d still like us to maintain course so someone more qualified can confirm that.”

“Yes, of course, sir. We’re only about ten minutes out.” Yularen conceded, doing a poor job of keeping his curiosity from overtaking his expression.

“Perfect timing, then,” General Skywalker said, his mouth twisting ruefully almost immediately after the words had left it. “Well, it’s still _terrible_ timing actually, but…” he shrugged.

Yularen opened his mouth, probably to ask for information about the baby, but Skywalker beat him to it.

“I think I’d probably be correct in assuming the men have been placing bets?”

Rex watched the eyes of every single person on the bridge go guiltily wide as saucers.

“General, that would be extremely—” Yularen spluttered, trying to deny it.

“Can I speak with whichever unfortunate man’s been conscripted to be your bookie?” Skywalker interrupted, still grinning. Rex was fairly sure that he was just amused, or at least too relieved to care what they had gotten up to, but he watched Yularen roll his shoulders back, obviously preparing himself to be yelled at by a Jedi who could be _very_ intimidating when he wanted to be.

“That would be me, General,” Yularen told him in a clipped voice. Skywalker’s eyebrows rose.

“You? Really? Huh.” He shook his head in surprise. “And I was _already_ going to apologize about making your job harder than you had probably expected it to be today.”

“What do you mean?”

General Skywalker took a moment to look at Yularen through the hologram, and Rex recognized the specific mirthful look in his eye. _What now?_ Rex thought.

“I don’t suppose anyone had any money on twins?”

Yularen paled. The bridge erupted in indignant shouts. Rex lamented the fact that he hadn’t thought of that as “option three.” He could have just become a very wealthy man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Skywalker twins are finally here! And everyone is fine and healthy: no exploding ammunition crates or dying of sadness (well, a few soldiers might be a little poorer, but that's it I swear).
> 
> This one wasn't as funny as the other ones, but I realized that I had written myself into a few semi-serious conversations that needed to be dealt with. Obi Wan is a softie, though, and he was always going to come through for Anakin. Padme _does_ end up helping negotiate with the Separatists, but Obi Wan just has the bright idea to let her do it via zoom (join the club, Padme) from her comfy hospital bed on Eriadu.
> 
> As with some of my other AUs, who knows whether I might be struck with the inspiration to write another little snippet in this universe, so I'm not going to mark it complete. Anakin introducing the babies to Rex and Yularen might be nice, hmmmmm. My New Year's Resolution is to apply for summer internships, so I might have to take care of that first before writing anything other than cover letters, unfortunately.
> 
> Happy New Year to all of you! Thanks for reading, commenting, bookmarking, kudos-ing, etc. <3


End file.
